Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett E21: Mental Health, Mistakes and My Apologies About this episode Diary of a CEO is back. Welcome to Season 2 of the podcast, Chapter 1 of my new diary. In the time I've been away a lot has happened and a lot has changed. If you're new to the channel, this podcast is where I share my deepest and darkest thoughts, both...
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:07 Steven Bartlett? The Diary of a CEO is back. And I've waited the longest time to be able to say that. Here's the thing. After season one, you wonderful people DM'd me, stopped me in the street, tweeted me and hounded me to bring the podcast back for another season. There is no piece of content that I produce that's had such a phenomenal dedicated response. And because of that, we've brought The Diary of a CEO back for a second season. And I've travelled tens of thousands of miles around the world, meeting inspiring people from the world's biggest YouTubers, most impressive business people, to the world's most inspiring artists. We've got an amazing mix of guests. The format is simple. This is not an interview.
0:51 Steven Bartlett? I want honesty, truth. I want to see into your personal diary. I want to understand you, not to advertise you. I want to hear the things that most people wouldn't have the guts to say, because in a world where everything is filtered, it's the unfiltered that people need the most. If you don't know me, my name is Steven Bartlett. I'm a dropout. I got kicked out of school. I started my first business at age 18. I'm now the 26-year-old CEO of one of the world's largest global marketing companies, Social Chain. We work with the world's biggest brands. We have five offices around the world and 270 full-time members of staff. I'm just doing my best, doing my best to be my best, but also to understand and navigate life. What a crazy, crazy journey it's been, and it's still yet to be.
1:36 Steven Bartlett? After season one of the podcast, so much of my life changed. I moved over 5,000 kilometres away to New York City, which is where I now live, and I moved there to focus on building our company in America. And trust me when I say this, America's a big place. America is a new challenge. It's a huge challenge. But I've spent my whole life out of my depth. So right now, America is where I need to be. More on that in a second, but before I open my diary and share all of my deep, sometimes dark thoughts with you, I just want to thank you. I want to thank you for listening. Thank you for waiting. Thank you for all of your posts, shares, comments, and reviews. I saw them all. And in return, me and my team have gone to extra lengths
2:17 Steven Bartlett? to ensure that season two is by far the best season yet. This is not scripted. There's no one else in the room with me right now. I promise on everything that I'm worth and my word and everything else. I'm recording this at 3:33 a.m. on a Sunday night alone in my hotel room. I'm going to share deep, personal thoughts with you. Things that have been playing on my mind, personal information that I haven't shared with another human being on earth, and ultimately, all of the notes that I've written into my diary since we last spoke. I hope you're ready. So without further ado, this is the Diary of a CEO, season two. I'm Steven Bartlett. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
3:01 Steven Bartlett? Where to start? Damn. Okay, so the first point in my diary, I've just written, "Mental health, the guy that committed suicide." And, um, I, this is a tough one for me. I'm just gonna tell you a story. I made a video on Facebook about, I don't know, six months ago. The video was called "Smiling Through Depression," and the video talked about how some of the world's most adored people that brought so much happiness to so many people's lives were fighting battles that you could never, ever see based on appearances. And I talked about Avicii, I talked about Robin Williams, and I talked about others. And my overall message in the video was just to treat everybody as if they're going through
3:46 Steven Bartlett? something which you know nothing about, and that kindness really could be the answer to so many things in this world. The video did great. I think it's, it's got 16, 17 million views, and I was so happy to see that it had such a positive impact on so many people. But here's the thing, I was on- I think it was Twitter, a few days after the video came out. And I got a direct message from somebody called Jack Dean. Jack Dean is a well-known YouTuber. He's got millions of subscribers and followers. He said to me, Steve, I've got a, got something pretty dark to tell you. He said, somebody I know locally has just killed themselves. And they're very well-known in our area. And the last thing they shared online was your video about mental health.
4:29 Steven Bartlett? And he sent me a link to this guy's Facebook page. And I went on this guy's Facebook page and there is my video. And all of his friends and family have used that video as a platform to now express their condolences and so on. And in that moment, I went through a tremendous amount of thoughts to think that somebody watched my video. And then within 12 hours of watching something that I had produced, made the decision to end their own life was, was something that I, um, I struggled with a little bit. And I didn't really tell anybody this at the time, but it was, it really messed with my head for, for a number of reasons. And I'm just going to try and explain all of those reasons to you. So when I released that video, I probably got about two to 3,000 messages
5:14 Steven Bartlett? from people who were going through mental health issues. And some of the things that people said, honestly, it makes my, my hair stand on edge. I, I spoke to an Egyptian girl stuck in her bedroom in Egypt, who hadn't left the room for four months. He was trying to find a way to kill herself. I spoke to people that I knew very closely that shared their very deep, personal stories about how they'd considered ending their own lives and everybody else, everybody else's life in their life. And then I dealt with this, you know, um, this guy who had shared my video and had killed himself.
5:58 Steven Bartlett? I felt, I think I felt everything at once. I felt sad. I felt speechless. I felt horrified. Ah, and then it's so, here's what happens when something like that happens. The first thing you think is, did I cause this? Did something I say in my video cause this person to end their own life? And I, I remember going back through the video and listening to it again through the lens of someone that might've been struggling. And thinking, is this, you know, you understand, I went down that, that path.
6:33 Steven Bartlett? It also didn't help because so many people around me who'd found out about this guy ending his own life and the fact that the last thing he'd watched was my video. They also messaged me to tell me, Steve, don't worry, he didn't end his life because of you. And I didn't really think that until people started saying it. So I think that sent me down that path further. And I asked myself a ton of questions. And then the, the second thing, and this is ultimately where I ended up. This is where my mind ended up was everything we do, everything we produce has the impact of reaching somebody in their most vulnerable, the most significant moment of their lives.
7:17 Steven Bartlett? It could be in a shop, you buying somebody their vegetables when they don't have enough change. It could be holding the door open for somebody. It could be something that you post online. And the truth is, you know, the videos I post on Facebook have varied between two million views and 35 million views. And I 100% am guilty of looking at those numbers as numbers and not as people. And in that moment, I realized those two things. I realized that everything I do could be reaching somebody and often is reaching somebody in a very vulnerable place and that those 35 million views are 35,
8:01 Steven Bartlett? potentially 35 million people, 35 million human beings. And so what it did for me in that moment, it gave me this intense sense of responsibility. And I, I'm like haunted by the thought that everything I produce and put online could be the last, potentially the last thing a human being hears.
8:25 Steven Bartlett? I am probably the last person that spoke to that guy that ended his life. And if I'd known that at the time when I recorded that video, what would I have said differently? What would I have done differently in that video? And that's the thought that's just stayed with me for a while. Mental health, because I haven't experienced mental health issues to the extent that a lot of people have in terms of anxiety and depression and bipolar and all of these things. For me, it's always, and this is me just being completely honest. It's always been a concept and a construct that's been quite hard to understand. If you've not gone through something, you can't fully appreciate it. You just can't, you can't pretend to.
9:06 Steven Bartlett? I believe every word everybody says when they talk about their mental health issues, every word. I feel it deeply within my soul and my being. It, it, it's always had a huge impact on me. And I've cried for friends that have gone through things. But in that moment, it all became so incredibly real, so incredibly real. And it makes me feel emotional even to talk about it now because I just wish there was something more I could have done. I wish there was, there was something more I could have said. And there's literally like tears in my eyes as I say this, but. And when I think about mental health issues more broadly, I think there's a few things that are really, really important.
9:46 Steven Bartlett? And I think one of them that I've come to learn over time is that it's, it's empowering, it's, it's peace bringing to understand that every moment we experience is temporary, every moment. Our darkest moments, our most stressful moments, they are temporary. And I know sometimes the duration of that, that those moments can be, can be years, it can be days, it can be hours, whatever. But those moments are temporary and we must never give up when it rains. But also our brightest moments are temporary. The days of joy, jubilation with friends, our fondest memories, all of those things are temporary.
10:25 Steven Bartlett? So we also need to learn that when it's sunny outside and when the sun's shining, we need to live more in the moment. And I think the perspective that all of our moments are temporary is one that will only bring us happiness and it'll help us weather the storm a little bit better.
10:44 Steven Bartlett? I've read a number of books in the last year since we've last spoken on this podcast about mental health and I've really managed to develop my own opinions on why our generation and society today has so many mental health issues to the point where I think it's a bit of a crisis. And I think about, and I'm going to talk very honestly and openly here because this is what this podcast is all about. I don't want to have to think about being PC, right? Or monitoring or filtering my opinion. I just don't have the fucking time, all the patience. So here's my thoughts. Human beings weren't built with mental health issues. We weren't created to have, you know, we didn't evolve with these mental health issues. I
11:27 Steven Bartlett? think a lot of the mental health issues, not all of them, but I think a lot of them are from causes that we don't yet fully appreciate. I 100% agree that there are biological and therefore medical reasons why we get mental health issues. The science supports that. But I think because of the way that mental health issues have exploded into our, into our generation, I guess, and into our society today, there must be other reasons. There must also be societal reasons. There must also be cultural reasons, because that is the only thing that's changed from now versus say a million years ago. Of course, awareness has changed as well. And being aware of these, these things has had a tremendous impact
12:12 Steven Bartlett? because people now feel they can talk about them. The stigma has been removed to some extent. There's still a stigma there, but to some extent. And so societal factors are the things that I focus on the most. And when I think about human beings and how we came to survive, there's this great book called Lost Connections. And here's a little bit of a hint, no, no hint, here's a little bit of a reveal. I've got the author of this book on this podcast. I recorded this with him in London. But to back up a sec, great book called Lost Connections, which really examines this. And basically it says this, a million years ago, we evolved to where we are today over that period of time. And
12:53 Steven Bartlett? a million years ago, we lived in much different ways. And it's, it's mind blowing to me that the way we used to live is the way that doctors and social psychologists and a lot of other people advise us to live today if we want to improve our mental wellbeing.
13:12 Steven Bartlett? I'd, listen, on the point of mental wellbeing, everybody has mental health, okay? In the same way that you have physical health. Mental health isn't a binary thing. It's not you're either ill or you're fine. It's a spectrum in my mind, right? So we all have mental wellbeing. And if you want to improve your mental wellbeing, according to social psychologists and others, they tell you to do things like exercise, to spend time with friends and family. These are all the things that science has proven improve our mental wellbeing. A million years ago, we were tribal animals, right? We lived with our loved ones and our friends. And I think this is why the book is called Lost Connections, because we've really lost our connections.
13:53 Steven Bartlett? Today, we live alone, generally, between four white walls, right? We don't see our loved ones. And when we speak to our loved ones, we do so by tapping glass screens, iPhones, Androids. We also used to live in nature. And there's something about nature which is innately human and calms our soul. There's this great study they've done in this book, Lost Connections, where if you look, prisoners in a prison that are looking out on nature are like thirty percent less likely to be depressed than the prisoners looking out on concrete. And that speaks to the innate sort of social needs that we have as human beings that we've
14:38 Steven Bartlett? lost today. We don't live in nature. We live in concrete jungles between four white walls. And the other thing which I think is so, so important is exercise. As tribe animals and humans, thousands and thousands of years ago, we used to walk, run, to hunt, we used to be active and we used to do activity and daily exercise every single day. We now use Uber to get around. So for me, when I think about mental health and how I can improve my own mental wellbeing, it's all of those things that involve getting back to being more human. It's spending more time with my friends and family. It's Daily exercise, it's being out in nature more. These are all the thing.
15:20 Steven Bartlett? And the book Lost Connections talks about how the feelings of anxiety and depression and loneliness are the human in us, calling us to get back to our tribe, to get back to how we lived. It's the pain of the way that the world is today, the loneliness. And there's this stat in the book that really blew my mind. It says that the modal answer, so the most common answer to the question, how many people could you turn to in a time of crisis for Americans is now zero. A decade ago, it was three. Now, the most common answer is zero. We have lost our connections.
15:59 Steven Bartlett? Okay, point two in my diary. I've just written this one sentence. I'm just going to read it as I've written it. I've written, fucking trust your gut, you fucking asshole. And just to give some context to that, the reason why I'm so annoyed is because once again, my gut knew something and I chose to ignore it because my head thinks it's smarter. There is no part of you that is, and this is, this experience comes from running a business and part of running a business, a big global business is you have to hire and meet a lot of people. So you have your gut instinct, which is always there, but then you make your decision based on your head and your gut usually, but also on, on CVs and, you know, qualifications and things like that.
16:42 Steven Bartlett? We've probably hired about 350 people in the last four years, right? And so what I get a very clear gauge of is what my gut thought of a person and then they, how they panned out. So this point in my diary, me calling myself an asshole for not trusting my gut again, comes from the realization, four years in, that my gut already knew. My gut already knew. My gut remembers. My gut remembers how people who felt like this, felt like the person you're meeting or interviewing or the relationship prospect, how they all pan out. And your gut doesn't forgive. It doesn't forget in the same way that your head sometimes talks yourself out of your gut, right?
17:27 Steven Bartlett? So I'm pissed off once again in my diary because not trusting my gut has cost me more than anything in my life. Not trusting my gut. And the other thing is, sometimes your gut comes in, uh, six months in, and it says to you, listen Jenny, or listen Steve, I told you six months ago about this person. I told you to trust your instincts, right? And I'm giving you another chance now to correct it immediately. And then your head shows up again and says, well, just give him another chance. Maybe it'll be different this time. Trust your gut. Ladies and gentlemen, I promise you, trust your gut. We don't trust our, our instincts enough. And I genuinely feel that the gut, right, sounds like a horrible word, but I, I feel like that is the thing
18:12 Steven Bartlett? that helped us to survive as human beings. On the savanna, I don't know, tens of thousands of years ago, or whenever it was, when we saw that lion, and we looked up at that lion, and we didn't go over and think, hey, I want to pet it, because we knew deep down that it would bite our hand off and chew us and maul us to death and, you know, suffocate us with its teeth. Um, that was our gut instinct. I think the same thing is still present today in us. And it's a survival thing, manifests itself in this unexplainable prejudice you
18:52 Steven Bartlett? get when you meet somebody. Um, I think it's important. I think that our eyes and our head and our brain are too logical sometimes for that thing that's caused us to survive for the last million years as a species. So all I'm saying is your gut is your, your weapon, and just trust and follow it. Because I can, yeah, as I said, me being stubborn and not learning from my fucking, you know, my mistake, my, sorry, I'm pissed off at this because it's one of those things that I just wish I did more often, but the chances are tomorrow, I still will go with my head and try and talk my gut out of it. Because sometimes
19:32 Steven Bartlett? the, the apparent evidence can be too compelling that you have to, you know, you have to, you feel you have to go for somebody. Damn. Trust your gut, ladies and gentlemen.
19:48 Steven Bartlett? I have failed over and over and over again at one thing. And if you've listened to this podcast, you've watched my vlogs, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. In 2018, I got fat, really fat. Fat in relation to how I've been my whole life. It's the fattest year of my life, 2018. And how did that happen? It happened because I ate a lot. Surprise. It happened because I ate a lot and I didn't exercise. And also, I just didn't give a fuck about eating more. So I would just, and you know what? I had a great time eating all those pizzas. But ultimately, you know, your body is really your only possession.
20:29 Steven Bartlett? Everything else you're just leasing, but your body is your only real possession. And I think the thing is, as I've written in my diary here, which leads on to my next point. And this is exactly what I wrote. Who the fuck do I want to be? That's the question I left in my diary. And it's been sat there for about four months now, staring at me. Who the fuck do I want to be? And I know for a fact this year and last year, but I failed. I want to be the best version of myself. And I believe so, so deeply in fitness and being healthy. When I go to the gym, I am happier. I have more energy because I sleep like a baby.
21:15 Steven Bartlett? I, my skin's better. You have a better sex life. Everything is better and I look better. And therefore my confidence is higher. I feel great. And in this year, I'm going to ask myself more often, who the fuck do I want to be? And most importantly, are my current actions, eating pizza, laying around, being lazy, in line with who I want to be? And last year, my actions were not in line with who I want to be. I'm going to be honest with you right now. Right, there's this drawer next to me.
21:54 Steven Bartlett? And it is full of chocolate bars. And guess what? I am hungry. It is 4 a.m. in the morning. I have a dairy dairy milk chocolate bar. There's two whisper chocolate bars. There's another caramel chocolate bar. I didn't put them there, by the way. This is a hotel.
22:10 Steven Bartlett? But I've just closed the door because my actions of eating those fucking chocolate bars are not in line with who I desperately want to be. And I think everybody is defined by how they react too hard. It is hard for me not to eat those chocolate bars right now. It is hard for me to do an extra rep in the gym. It is hard for me to go up on stage when I'm nervous. Not that I'm nervous these days, but back in the day. It is hard to work an extra hour recording a podcast at 4 a.m. in the morning now, when I really want to sleep and I know that I have to be awake at 3 a.m. We are all defined by how we react too hard. When that when that thought crosses your mind,
22:52 Steven Bartlett? this is hard, right? Your decision in that moment is a defining one. That's who you are. And how we react too hard is based on how bad we want the thing on the other side of hard. You know? And so the reason I'm not eating those fucking chocolate bars is because A, that's not who I want to be. And I know that if I make the decision and I and I cave in, then I won't get the thing on on the other side of hard. And the thing on the other side of hard for me this year is going to the gym, looking great and being healthy. In the last, I would say, so I started
23:32 Steven Bartlett? going to the gym in in late December. I've been going for 17 days in a row now. And I'm not deterred by the fact that I've failed almost every year at this at this health and fitness. Let's just call it a resolution, you know? I'm not deterred by that. I am going to try again. And 99% of you listening to this should logically not believe me. But let's just see what happens. I feel great. I've lost about Uh, how much have I lost? About six pounds in the last seventeen days. And when I do things, I am obsessive about them. So I've not eaten a carb, a bad carb in those seventeen days.
24:14 Steven Bartlett? I've only eaten salads. I won't even look at a fucking mint, just in case it's gonna, it's that, you know, I look at these things now as the enemy. This drawer full of chocolate is the enemy. And kind of linking on to that, I've got this other point in my diary here, which I wanted to share. I get asked all the time, what um book or podcast or quote inspired me to become who I wanted to be? And the truth is, I wasn't inspired by a podcast, or a book, or a quote. This is just who I am. Faults and all, right? I'm far from perfect. This is who I am. I'm not trying to be this. I'm not acting.
24:56 Steven Bartlett? I became who I am today, in fact, and this is the crazy thing. When I stopped acting, when I stopped trying to be somebody else, everybody else, this is who I am. And I genuinely think, I genuinely, this might be the the most important thing I've ever said on the internet ever. I genuinely believe that if you want to become great, happy, successful, all you need to do is stop being everyone else or trying to be someone else. I think disguised behind that mask in the ego and all of those things,
25:38 Steven Bartlett? there is a really amazing human being, right? A really, and a human being that the world needs. Not a fucking clone of Mark Zuckerberg or someone else or someone the world desperately needs. And I think if you can take down the mask, take down your ego, and focus on being that person without care of what people might say, what your mother might do, what your dad might, you know, who he might disown you, what your friends might laugh at you for. I think that's the the greatest version of yourself. And it's taken me, what, twenty six odd years to figure this out, but
26:18 Steven Bartlett? the best version of Steve is a Steve that just doesn't give a fuck. Is is the Steve that um just does him and tries to be be better, but also admits that he's crap at a lot of things and most things. So yeah, that's all I've got to say on that diary entry.
26:37 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so this is a, an interesting point in my diary. I've just written, I need to learn to say sorry more. Where does this come from? Um, hmm. Here's the thing. When we mess up and we hurt people, there's a powerful, almost a magical way to help to repair the situation. It's completely free. It takes one second and anyone can do it. Say, I'm sorry. It sounds so simple, but it's almost impossible. If you care about your ego more than you care about anybody else or anything else, or the hurt you might have done, or the damage you've done.
27:20 Steven Bartlett? And I have been a criminal when it comes to this. I have been so guilty because at time, I'm such an incredibly stubborn person at times, you know? I'm someone that doesn't always like being, being wrong. And sometimes I'm wrong. And when I judge the situation, I judge it from a biased perspective where I want to win. And I've, I've come to learn, especially over the last 12 months, the, the, the liberating, important value of saying sorry more, even when you're not wrong. You're just saying sorry because of the way you've made someone feel. And not enough people do this.
28:00 Steven Bartlett? And I think they'll go through their lives, damaging important things, relationships, you know, in the pursuit of winning, but ultimately lose because they can't detach themselves from their ego. And their ego becomes more important than anything else. I'm victim of, I'm sorry, I, I do this and I just said it, I just said, I'm sorry. I do this more than a lot of people. So, um, I think this year I really want to focus on making sure that I say sorry more often. And even when I'm not, I have nothing to be sorry for, just being sorry for how I've made you feel. That wasn't my intention. And while I'm here and we're talking about two words, the other two words that I think are just incredibly important to say, which again, I do not say enough.
28:42 Steven Bartlett? Again, completely free can have a tremendous impact on relationships and people around you. In fact, this, these two words get you more things in your life that you will love. And the words are thank you. An expression of gratitude, especially when you you're in a sort of a management position or a director position, is so important because it begets more things to be thankful about from people around you. But in life in general, if you can be thankful for more things, your perspective becomes more grateful. So even if you go through the same things as everybody else, if you have a more grateful perspective, it will feel like your life
29:22 Steven Bartlett? has been better, you've got more, and you've had better times. So gratitude as a perspective change, I think, starts with being thankful more and saying thank you more often. That's my little rant. So those two words, I hope everybody listening can do more to bring into their lives more. I'm sorry and thank you.
29:44 Steven Bartlett? Let me just do a left turn and let's talk about business for a second. So in season one of the podcast, I told you that I was flying to America and I was moving my life to America to try and grow the business there. Here's the truth, okay? And I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this, but you know, this is what this podcast is all about. I get in trouble so much for things I say on this podcast and I just apologize. I've had to apologize to, you know, family at times, to friends. I have to apologize to romantic partners all the time because all of my podcasts end in a very personal, honest recap of how my relationships are going currently. That always gets me in trouble and I'm sure it will today, but here we fucking go. But I want to talk about business. I moved to the
30:27 Steven Bartlett? US to help grow the business there. In our first year in the US, we failed. Just the facts, right? We didn't get any traction. We weren't serious. We didn't invest enough. Didn't provide enough support to the guys that we'd sent there. We failed. Year two, progress, but not great. I'd consider year two a failure as well because the losses were significant, right? Year three, I flew out there in about March time. The team had gotten to a point where it was really looking good. And I have to, just before I go into this, I have to give all of the credit to the team. I my me flying flying out there really wasn't the the the reason why this business did so well this year, it was because of the team.
31:12 Steven Bartlett? And that isn't a humble thing I'm saying because I'm saying, yeah, whatever. That is just the truth. Okay. So that's that's the important thing. I flew out there in March, we really got going. We moved into a big new office space in the middle of Manhattan, out of co-working and we work, um, which I fucking find very claustrophobic at times. Um, and into our brand new office space and we went for it. Grew the team, we're now about thirty people. And our objective when we started two thousand and eighteen was to grow the business's revenues by about a thousand percent in one year. And I'm very happy and very proud of the team to say that the US team did that this year, they grew the business by about a thousand percent.
31:56 Steven Bartlett? And because of that, things are getting serious out there and I couldn't be more excited. I've I am full of just energy when I think about the the challenge out there, um, and the growth of the business. And I believe in those people so fucking much. I believe in every single member of that team. And this year, we appointed a new managing director of the Social Chain USA, which gives me more time to do other things and think about the business from a more global perspective. A guy called Oliver Yonchev, who was one of our our real A players in the UK. Oliver turned to me and said he wants a a challenge. He said he wants to to go to America and apply for a job, um, in a leadership role.
32:41 Steven Bartlett? I said I was looking for a managing director. He interviewed among with a couple of others and he he passed with flying colors. So Oliver now has moved his life from Sheffield to New York City. And it's good, it's listen, it sounds like. Everybody's dream come true, but it is tough. And Oliver, I don't know if you're listening, mate, but you're going to go through a lot of tough things. I'm sure you're aware, but on personal, on a personal level, there'll be, you know, you'll feel isolated, big old city, you know, no friends there thus far. So you'll feel isolated, you might miss your girlfriend a lot, I'm sure you will, but oh my God, will it be worth it? So that's what, that's what, where we are with the US challenge, which
33:23 Steven Bartlett? I talked a lot about in season one. The UK business, boom, tremendous. What a brilliant, brilliant year. The team have just been, I don't know, we, the, the profits of the UK business grew by something like five, 600% and I, I couldn't be prouder of the team and what they've done. The UK business, from what I understand now, is even the number one, or maybe it's number two, but I think it's number one. Let's just say it's number one for the sake of this podcast and for the sake of bragging. I think it's now the number one social marketing agency in the country. Someone, feel free to fact check me on that and just DM me, but I believe it is in terms of revenue. And so I'm so immensely
34:03 Steven Bartlett? proud. It's the story of, you know, this young, different team that have disrupted decade old massive agencies. And we're all a bunch of dropouts. And even that those that are now much more senior and experienced, they too are of the same disruptive mindset that we all are. And I just couldn't be prouder. So just a recap on the, the business updates. Social Chain's breakout year was 2018. And now that the US has its own managing director, the UK is also led by its own managing director, Katie Leeson, who has an amazing podcast, by the way, called I Shouldn't Say This But, which I, which I just featured on. Now that
34:43 Steven Bartlett? that's done, I now have more time to invest in my content, in my podcast, in my vlogs, in everything. And hopefully 2019 is the breakout year for the personal brand and for my personal brand. Looking to bring on two new people to help with the personal brand initiatives, just to make sure that all of my content is consistent, so that all of you guys and girls don't have to wait. And thank you for the patience, because you've allowed me the, the 12 months to build up our US business and it couldn't be in a better place. Lots, lots of work to be done as always, but I'm just very thankful that, that we, that we did it, you know? That we did it. Strange thing to say. Anyway.
35:28 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so a few more little notes that I scribbled into my diary. None of these points are particularly connected, but they're written here. So I'm going to tell you. The first one I've just written, don't let the pressures from the fairy tales of how your life is meant to be going get you down. Everyone's timing is different. And the reason I wrote this is because I received a very disturbing and saddening call at about 3am from a kid who I'm just going to call John for for his own privacy. And this kid had just taken off, he'd just proposed to his girlfriend, and he'd just taken off his engagement ring after she'd said no, and he'd thrown it into
36:08 Steven Bartlett? a lake. And he was stood by the lake, and he called me to tell me that he was going to kill himself. He was going to jump in the lake. And this was at 3am in the morning. I can't remember where I was, where I was in the world. But I immediately jumped up out of bed and I started chatting to him. And one of the things he said to me, which really, really got to me at the time, and still kind of plays on my mind today, is he said, I'm going to kill myself. Nothing in my life is going right. I don't have anything going for me. And I look at your life, Steve, and you have everything figured out. Oh, my fucking god. This guy is 22 years old. And because of
36:51 Steven Bartlett? social media, because of comparison, toxic comparison, might I add, he's now considering throwing himself in a lake because he feels inadequate. And the thought that him looking at my life and thinking from the outside that it's all perfect has contributed to that was really, oh, my god. But I wouldn't be saying this if this was an isolated incident. My DMs, my direct messages specifically on Instagram, which I really check a lot, are full of young people who are literally under the age of 25, who are killing themselves, not in a literal sense, in a figurative sense, killing themselves, because they are
37:32 Steven Bartlett? Aren't there yet because they aren't super rich, super successful because they haven't got all the answers, all the Nobody has all the fucking answers. I don't have all the answers. My life isn't perfect. What you see from the outside, right, of my life is I've got one thing kind of going well, which is like my career and my um my professional, you know, the professional side of what I do, social training, the business, that stuff's going well. Everything else, you beat me on everything else. You're closer to your family, which is probably more important according to science than running a business, by the way. You probably, you had a girlfriend. I know you proposed and she said no, but mate, I can't even fucking hold down a relationship. So you're beating me there as well. You're probably better at getting your haircut and keeping yourself
38:16 Steven Bartlett? like trimmed and stuff like that. You probably take better care of yourself. You probably sleep better than I do. I'm winning on one thing and that's the thing that I dance about online. So don't fucking sweat it and think I have everything figured out because, bro, no one does. I'm still, I'm desperately still trying to figure out most elements of my life, right? And I am sorry if I gave you the impression that I was perfect or if anybody else is doing that. It is bullshit, bullshit. Trust me. Nobody is successful as Instagram makes them look and nobody is as pretty as filters make them seem. The only worthwhile comparison, the only comparison that stands to make your future bright
38:58 Steven Bartlett? is the comparison of you today versus you yesterday. Comparison is deadly and it holds such an immense irony because in the pursuit of comparing yourself to someone and therefore wanting to be better, you end up doing a bunch of shit that holds you back. You end up being jealous. You end up trying to take shortcuts and there is no shortcuts, right? Comparison is toxic and it ultimately ends up leading to you to the the one place you didn't want to be, right, which is not your full potential, not your best self and all of those things.
39:38 Steven Bartlett? Do not compare yourself to others' kids, please, and adults and whoever's listening, please, I beg you.
39:47 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so I've written in my diary the next note, which is just still trying to figure out what this is all about. And in season one of the podcast, you would have felt me going on a bit of a journey. Do you know what? I actually think season one of recording this podcast taught me more about life, just by having to write in my diary and then speak about it than anything else I've ever done. You guys and this format and this podcast helped me get closer to understanding the meaning of my life and the purpose of my life. And I've basically written here that I'm still trying to figure out what that's all, what it's all about, because I've gotten a lot closer. Once upon a time, 18 year old Steve, as you guys all know, wrote in his diary that he wanted millions of pounds before
40:29 Steven Bartlett? he was 25 in a Range Rover Sport. 25 year old Steve had, was worth millions and had a Range Rover Sport, right? Upon getting there, I realised that if I spent my whole life chasing this material bullshit, I would live a very, very miserable existence. And there's this great, great, important study done by a professor called Tim Kessar, which scientifically proves in his study, but then in 21 other studies, that people who go through life valuing extrinsic things and doing things for extrinsic reasons, which means external reasons, basically. So to impress a girl, to look fancy, to look good on Instagram, to get likes, to get laid. All of those things, they end up being less
41:13 Steven Bartlett? happy, more depressed and everything else, right? And people that do things for internal reasons, they are nice because they want to be nice. They play piano because of the joy of it, not because they're trying to get laid or paid. They see their family and spend time with their family because they love their family. They go for walks because they love nature, not because of any external reasons or for external motives. Science shows those people are the most happiest, the less depressed, the less anxious, and they experience more joy. So.
41:43 Steven Bartlett? This podcast doubles up for me as a journey of me figuring out alone, with you listening, hopefully, or hopefully not, what life is all about. And where I am right now is here. I know that money isn't life. I know that money won't make me happier. What I do know is that using my money to help friends, family, people in need does make me deeply happy. It gives me a deep sense of being fulfilled and, you know, it's rewarding for me. So for me, when it comes to money, what I now know is it's not about collecting more money or showing off how much money you have. It's how you use it.
42:28 Steven Bartlett? And if you use it in the right way, money really can have a really sort of rewarding impact on your life. The second thing is just about doing good in general. For some bizarre reason, which I'm yet to understand, there is very few things that are as rewarding as helping others. And this is something everyone's always said, but I've never understood. But most of the fun in my role, in my job, in my life, comes from helping others, whether that's an intern that's just started at Social Chain, whether it's someone that messages me on Instagram, or whatever it might be. And so I also know that that's hugely important for my future. And whatever I end up doing in the future, whether it's 10 years or 20 years' time, it'll be linked to that. And in fact, I do have a business idea.
43:13 Steven Bartlett? Do I tell you about this business idea on this podcast? Or do I just wait? What should I do? I'm going to hold off a little bit on this business idea. I'm going to hold off on telling you the business idea for the future. But it's to do with helping people. It's to do with a few of the things I've described today. It's actually quite heavily linked to mental health as well. And I just think that, you know, with all the skills I've learned over the last couple of whatever, whatever period of time, it makes a lot of sense. And the funny thing is, at all stages in my life, I've accurately predicted what my next step is professionally. And so when I first started Wall Park, I predicted that my next business would be in marketing. As I said to Dom, who's now my business partner, I said my next business will be in marketing.
43:56 Steven Bartlett? And then now my prediction is that my next business will be in the mental health arena. That's all I'm saying.
44:04 Steven Bartlett? Should I tell you more? Let's leave it at that.
44:08 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so all of my podcasts end the same way, which is me talking about my relationships. In my diary, I've written, relationship situation is pretty fucked. Almost all of my notes this week have swear words in it. I do apologize if that's, if you don't like me swearing. I just, um, it's just how I speak in my head, you know?
44:26 Steven Bartlett? Why, this is not new news to me, but one of the things I've come to learn from a certain people, certain, okay, a certain girl telling me is that I'm really not emotionally there sometimes. And I do really, really worry that my own selfishness and my own sort of like emotional vacancy. Is that a word? I'm emotionally vacant. And my relentless desire to build a business will cost me the happiness of a meaningful relationship. And meaningful relationships with family and others as well, but more so in a romantic sense. I so desperately hope that when I get into the situation where I'm with somebody or in a relationship, whatever,
45:09 Steven Bartlett? I can be more compromising and emotionally there because I, for whatever reason, I'm a bit of a cold bastard. Like I am a bit of a, bit of a, bit of an ice king. You know, my heart is made of, it's, it's like I struggle with affection and I struggle to care. I'm very ruthless and I'm too focused on this one element of my life, which is business and, and being successful. That I am crap at, you know? I don't know. It's just really hard, you know? You just can't have it all in life. You can't be, you can't be the best at everything.
45:50 Steven Bartlett? You can't be the best at being a young entrepreneur, the best at making, I don't know, making wedding dresses, the best at podcasting, the best at relationships, the best at family, all at the same time. So I do feel that there's an element of sacrifice, but I just don't, all of the science and everything worth. You know, Worth Reading tells me that relationships and friendships are such an integral part of being happy. And all of this is about happiness. Let's not get it fucking twisted. This is the journey of happiness. I think that's why my favorite film is The Pursuit of Happiness, because that's what life is all about. It's the pursuit of happiness. And we all have different opinions about how happiness arrives. Some of us think
46:32 Steven Bartlett? it's by buying Bentleys and Lamborghinis. Some of us think it's by helping animals. Some of us think it's, you know, and the truth is our happiness comes in different ways, but there are fundamental human things that will make us happy. And one of those, unarguably, undoubtedly, is other human beings. It's romantic relationships. It's the love of family. And so if this is all about the pursuit of happiness, if this is what I'm doing here, then surely, surely, I have to prioritize romantic relationships, family and all those things. It's just something that I've struggled with for the longest time. If you guys have listened to the season one of the podcast, you will feel my struggles
47:12 Steven Bartlett? with this. I'm single right now. I am, I guess, like loosely speaking to somebody on and off. I'm getting, getting told off a lot at the moment for being a bit of a jackass when it comes to being considerate and understanding how, how they feel and just talking enough. But other than that, I'm, I'm single and I don't necessarily want to be single either. I do think life is great when you're in a relationship and you're close to somebody and all these things and they live close and you see them every day and all these things. It's just circumstance doesn't allow that at the moment. Anyway, before, you know,
47:56 Steven Bartlett? what time is it now? It's four twenty nine. So I must have been recording this for about an hour. And I've got to be up in about two and a half hours. So let me get to bed. But listen, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. It does mean the world to me. As always, this is therapy. And now that I've recorded this episode, I just can't understand why I don't do this more often. It's so good for me. Do me a massive favor, pretty please. Pretty please. Can you review the podcast in the podcast store, the iTunes store, five stars please, or wherever else you listen to it. And if you do, please just leave your Instagram name or handle in the review. And when I go through, I will message a bunch of you that have done it, that have reviewed it five stars. Message me privately about
48:41 Steven Bartlett? the podcast, tweet me your thoughts, please share it online. Every single person that messages me about this episode, about the podcast in general, I will reply to, I promise you. And I'm so deeply happy to have this, this format, this medium of communicating with you back. And I can't wait for you to hear this series. We have some amazing guests and some amazing moments that I've, that I've recorded all around the world. I'll continue to do the solo podcast. The format I'm thinking is of doing one on my own and then doing one with a guest, then one of my own, then one with a guest. Let me know what you think of that. Message me privately. But thanks again for tuning in. We'll be back soon, next week, next week, to be precise, with episode two, which has already been
49:25 Steven Bartlett? recorded with an amazing guest. And I can't wait to share that with you. So thanks again. Please review it. Thanks. Share it. Love you. Bye bye.
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